Descent Into Dust (21 page)

I saw on Mr. Fox’s face the defeat of the damned. “Run,” I said, a weak, mewling sound. He had not looked into Marius’s eyes and thus he could have escaped if he wished. But I knew he would not leave me, even at the price of his own soul.

I wept. I confess, my own person was so thoroughly stripped, I do not know for whom I cried. Was it for Mr. Fox, who was facing a damnation worse than mere death, or for me who was to be denied the same?

“Demon!” a rich, timbered voice thundered, blistering into the exquisite realm of my suffering. My head snapped up, and I saw the form of a large man towering above me. He moved quickly to stand before Mr. Fox and even in this wicked light I recognized the priest, Father Luke.

Tears ran in a pair of steady streams on my cheek. Father Luke did not even glance at me, but forged forward. Latin
words spilled out of him with authority, and I could feel Marius hesitate at this new enemy.

The priest held before him a large golden crucifix, the one from the rosary I’d seen him with in the graveyard. He wielded it with absolute confidence and the effect on Marius was instantaneous. The fiend, stone-faced with rage, blinked into mist, which abruptly dissipated.

I could see by the darting glances of both men that they did not know where he had retreated. But I did. He was in the corner. Shrouded in shadow, he gathered his corporeal self behind the priest’s back.

I knew what he planned. My head had cleared enough for me to think again. But I was weak; my legs would not support me, and my hands shook in a pitiable palsy. I saw the shadowed Marius, invisible to the others, begin to slide toward Mr. Fox, who mistakenly had gone lax in relief.

Crawling on all fours, I dove to snatch the small reticule I’d brought with me. I dug my hand inside and called, “Father Luke!” I held out the thin switch of the hawthorn I’d brought with me. The priest stared for a moment, and the foul stench that was my reliable harbinger of the fiend’s presence grew. It was strong. He was coming.

“Hurry,” I said urgently. “He is behind you, in the shadow. He means to take Mr. Fox. Use this.”

I shouted this with authority, and threw the stick. The priest caught it, confused for a moment before casting it down. His fist closed tightly on his cross.

“No,” Fox shouted. “She is Dhampir. Do as she instructs.”

I moved, taking up the fallen hawthorn branch, but my body betrayed me. Marius had formed again, scorchingly handsome—
almost beautiful—and seeming to glow with the red light of evil. Our eyes met for one moment before I remembered to yank my gaze away. But I was still stricken, and the hawthorn fell from my nerveless fingers.

Father Luke fell back, then recollected himself and surged forward, arm outstretched so that the crucified Christ was his weapon. Marius emitted a sound that was the hiss of the snake and the blood-freezing growl of the wolf, combined. He struck out, his arm like a whip, sending the crucifix flying out of Father Luke’s hand.

A sob exploded from me, knowing as I did we were doomed. This small, involuntary sound saved us, for Marius whipped about to me, searching for the threat. I saw a flash of fear in his eye, as if some danger might come from my quarter.

Before I could puzzle at that unexpected reaction, Father Luke leapt forward, moving astonishingly fast for a man of his size, falling then rolling across the ground. He came up with the slender stalk of hawthorn. Marius snapped around, surprised and wary of the switch of wood.

Hope flared, then quickly died as Father Luke took the pointed stake by its ends and, in one swift, downward motion, brought it down over a raised knee and broke it in two. He held out the broken pieces of the stick in the formation of a cross.

“Deus, in nómine tuo salvum me fac, det virtúte tua age causam meam,”
Father Luke intoned commandingly. Marius retreated a step, his eyes on the makeshift cross.

I watched as Father Luke advanced, and all of a sudden, I knew. “Pierce him!” I called.

“Do it!” Fox bellowed behind me.

We all froze—all four of us—before the priest broke apart his
talisman and, grasping the shorter piece, the one with the hastily filed point I’d fashioned, made the quick, slashing motion of an experienced knife artist.

Marius twisted defensively. The jab caught the lord vampire in the upper arm, yet the wound appeared to cause him great agony. He roared and stamped, his great cloak whirling as he hunched over, grasping the gash. With a great rush of air, he dissolved once again, the foul-smelling mist hanging in the air for a moment before dispersing at lightning speed in all directions, like talc in a gust.

The silent tableau of the three of us remained in place. Then Father Luke flung down the hawthorn stick and turned away, falling on his knees to pray.

I rushed forward, and took up the stick. The tip glistened in the dark with what I could only assume was blood. Marius’s blood. I was exceedingly confused. Wadim had released not a drop of fluid or blood when Fox had pierced him. Only bits of dried rust-colored old blood had appeared on the stake. This made sense; Wadim had been dead. But was not Marius equally dead? How was it blood flowed in the veins of a dead being?

I threw the useless thing aside and felt a rush of bone-crushing fatigue as I turned back to the others. The priest still murmured his prayers. Mr. Fox was still kneeling on the floor, in pain as he struggled to rise.

Sickness stole over me, crawling like spiders from the pit of my stomach. I felt as bereft as if I’d endured a rape of the most violent kind. I looked from man to man, searching for something to say, for some normal thing to banish the encroaching horror as what just had transpired began to take root in my awareness. I had been moving on instinct, but now—now I could think again. I could remember, and feel the violation.

And, oh, God, I was sick!

I doubled over and sank down to my knees, a boneless, nerveless heap, desiring only to expire in shame and the deepest humiliation. A moment later, gentle hands lifted me, bore me away from that place. I looked, and it was Mr. Fox who held me.

He touched my face gently, touching the burning spot where Marius’s shadow finger had rested. “Emma, I am so sorry.”

“What am I?” I cried.

His look was pity and tenderness and it made me weep again. I could not stop, not even when he spoke in short, hushed tones to Father Luke. They did their work with Mr. Hess, and I watched, exhausted and bereft. They staked him, breaking off the tip and closing his coat over the evidence of the deed, and then Father Luke prepared the body using holy water. Mr. Fox did something with salt and muttered prayers in a language that made the priest’s eyebrows crawl upward over his forehead.

They laid our friend to rest. And when this was done, Mr. Fox smoothed my hair from my face and said, “I shall get you home now.”

Chapter Eighteen

W
e did not go back to Dulwich Manor. I was in no condition for that. The men conferred, and it was agreed we would return with Father Luke to the rectory at Saint Michael in the Fields.

Three quarters of an hour later, I found myself sitting in the small, rather claustrophobic confines of a parish drawing room with a Catholic priest and a self-confessed vampire hunter, drinking strong Madeira wine as though it were lemonade. I did not look at anyone. I kept my eyes forward and unfocused as the horror of the last hour rippled through me over and over again. I could still feel the lingering trace, like the smear of slime left in the wake of a bloated slug, of the great vampire’s touch.

Neither man tried to comfort me. For this I was grateful. I was allowed exactly what I needed: to be left alone until the wine began to relax me.

“I suppose I should begin by asking who you are,” the priest finally said after a protracted and heavy silence. I glanced up from contemplating the deep crimson in my glass. He was talking to Mr. Fox.

I studied the elegant man sitting quietly, encased in the enigmatic stillness he wore so well, the very thing that had driven me to nearly pulling out my hair on so many occasions.
Yes, indeed, Mr. Fox. Let us find out who you are.

Fox looked at the priest with flat, expressionless eyes. “For many years, I have been hunting the vampire you just confronted,” he said.

“I suppose you have a compelling reason for such a dangerous occupation.” Father Luke’s voice was modulated, wearing the authority of a Roman cleric, but it was not mild. Nothing about the hulking man could ever be so.

Mr. Fox allowed a hint of emotion to pass over his features. And then it was gone. “He took something from me.”

My eyebrows beetled as I watched the priest, observing how sanguine he was. All this talk of vampires and he did not so much as touch the crucifix suspended prominently from a chain around his neck. And he had accepted Mr. Fox’s answer—which was no answer at all. But then, one doesn’t press another too closely when one has secrets of one’s own.

“Who are you?” I demanded abruptly, startling both men. I never would have behaved so crassly if not for the floating, free feeling the wine had given me. I uncurled a finger from around my wineglass and leveled it at Father Luke. “You are no ordinary priest.”

He smiled quietly as he arranged his hands on his lap. “Let me just say that I am aware of the presence of a vampire in this area, and have been for some time. Which you guessed, Mrs. Andrews. I am afraid my thespian skills are lacking. It did not occur to me to feign surprise until after you were gone. I gave myself away, I fear.”

“Yes,” I said, and suddenly wanted to weep with relief. Finally, truth. “The tree up on The Sanctuary. I saw him there.”

Father Luke shook his head. “That is not where he sleeps. I have already looked.” He raised his eyes first to Mr. Fox and then me. “I have not discovered that place yet. Nor have you, obviously. I have thought it likely Silbury Hill, or the Long Barrows. Those are tombs, after all. If he has indeed set up his resting place there, we will never find him even if we had every man and woman in the village searching for a hundred years. It is simply too vast.”

“What are these crypts, and the stone circles?” I asked. “What do they represent?”

“Death,” he said simply. “Avebury is a necropolis, Mrs. Andrews. A city organized around funereal purposes. A city of the dead, to be precise.”

Mr. Fox said, “Which lies along the Saint Michael line, populated by strongholds built by the Church. They are attempting to protect something.”

Father Luke spoke as if choosing his words carefully. “The forces concentrated along the meridian line are of interest to the Mother Church. Chapels, churches, and such guard the places along the line where the barrier between worlds might grow, from time to time, alarmingly thin. Saint Michael’s is one such outpost.”

I was rather stunned at this revelation. According to what he was telling us, under the blessing—indeed, the mandate—of Rome, he manned an outpost along the line where the living and the dead were believed to meet. All of my earlier musings on the Church’s involvement, which had seemed outlandish at the time, appeared to have come very close to the truth.

“From before the first missionaries,” Father Luke continued, “when this land belonged to pagan worshippers, even back to the earliest settlements in this area, this place has been known to be holy. That is why the stones were brought here, spread out along the hillside to form the monument, the Serpent.” He paused, waiting to see if this got a reaction from either Mr. Fox or me. “It is a very…particularly important place, one that has played a significant role in the battle between good and evil throughout the centuries.”

Fox lowered his chin to rest on his steepled fingers. “Do you know why Marius has come?”

Father Luke paused, then replied carefully, “The modern church does not officially recognize the existence of vampires.”

“You are not going to bore me with doctrine,” Mr. Fox challenged darkly.

“I merely wish to make the point that I am not speaking with any official standing.”

The feeling was returning, that awful invasion, as if maggots had infested my veins. The smell of Marius’s breath pricked my nostrils; the memory acutely vivid, and yet even now—and through all of my disgust—desire for what he offered stirred in me. My hand shook as I put my glass to my lips and drained the last of Madeira.

Then I spoke. “The tree, the one up on The Sanctuary. It has
the words ‘The Blood is the Life’ carved on it. And I found a broken plaque on the ground with a fish symbol, exactly like the one on your ring.”

“The tree is a holy symbol,” Father Luke explained. “Hawthorn, called whitethorn or even Christthorn by some, is what the Roman soldiers used to construct the crown of thorns for Jesus. Also, it is not native to England, but is from the east. The fact that it blooms twice a year, most oddly at around the Christmastide season as well as summer, enhances its mystique.”

“It must have real powers,” Fox reasoned. “You saw what just scratching the skin with the cutting from the tree did.”

The priest frowned as he gave this some thought. “Yes. That was quite clever.” Rising, Father Luke consulted a stack of books on a shelf behind his chair. “Let me read to you what Sir John Maundeville wrote: ‘Then was Our Lord led into a garden, and there they made him a crown of the branches of the Albiespyne, that is Whitethorn, that grew in the same garden, and set it upon his head. And therefore hath the Whitethorn many virtue. For he that beareth a branch on him thereof, no thunder, nay no manner of tempest may dare him, nay in the house that it is in may not evil ghost enter.’”

But I had already known, somehow, that the hawthorn would hold sway over evil.

Mr. Fox’s voice, as dark as velvet, cut in. “Folk wisdom has it a vampire can be imprisoned in a tree.”

Father Luke bowed his head and smiled somewhat bitterly. “It does indeed.”

“That tree on The Sanctuary. It was sealed with the symbol exactly like the one on the ring you wear. I believe, Father, that you should tell us all you know.”

The priest closed his eyes for a moment. “The symbol is the mark of my order. For generations, our priests have been here at this church. There is a power, a being which is bound in some way to The Sanctuary.”